Gibson et al. (2017) argued that color naming is shaped by patterns of
communicative need. In support of this claim, they showed that color naming
systems across languages support more precise communication about warm colors
than cool colors, and that the objects we talk about tend to be warm-colored
rather than cool-colored. Here, we present new analyses that alter this
picture. We show that greater communicative precision for warm than for cool
colors, and greater communicative need, may both be explained by perceptual
structure. However, using an information-theoretic analysis, we also show that
color naming across languages bears signs of communicative need beyond what
would be predicted by perceptual structure alone. We conclude that color naming
is shaped both by perceptual structure, as has traditionally been argued, and
by patterns of communicative need, as argued by Gibson et al. - although for
reasons other than those they advanced